McCain Addresses NAACP Convention

While addressing the NAACP, Sen. John McCain praised Sen. Barack Obama's historic campaign. The presumptive Republican nominee also told crowd he will give more help to students in failing schools. Video by AP

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SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: (JOINED IN PROGRESS) I appreciate your kind invitation and this warm welcome to the NAACP. And by the way, this is your second invitation to me during my presidential campaign, and I hope you'll excuse me for passing on the opportunity at your convention last year and not being here.

As you might recall, I was a bit distracted at the time dealing with what reporters uncharitably described as an implosion in my campaign. But I'm very glad that you invited me again.

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Let me begin, if I may, with a few words about my opponent. Don't tell him I said this, but he's an impressive fellow in many ways.

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He's inspired a great many Americans, some of whom have wrongly believed that a political campaign could hold no purpose or meaning for them. This success should make Americans, all Americans, proud. Of course, I would prefer his success not to continue quite as long as he hopes, but it does make you and me proud to know the country I've loved and served all my life, still a work in progress and always improving.

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Senator Obama talks about making history, and he's made quite a bit of it already. And the way was prepared by this venerable organization and others like it.

A few years before the NAACP was founded, President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage and an insult in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time. There's no better evidence of this than the nomination of an African-American to be the presidential nominee of his party.

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So whatever the outcome in November, Senator Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and his country, and I thank him for it.

As our country has changed these past few decades, so have many of your debates within the and within other civil rights organizations. In the days of separate lunch counters, bull horns and fire hoses, the mission was hard and dangerous, but it was easily defined.

The advancement of African-Americans meant equal protection under law in a country where the law had simply codified injustice. That cause required the enormous courage and commitment of generations and a determination to hold this nation to its own creed.

You know better than I do, far better than I do, how different the challenges are today for those who championed the cause of equal opportunity in America. Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value, what is the value of access to a failing school?

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Equal employment opportunity is set firmly down in law, but with jobs becoming scarcer and 400,000 Americans thrown out of work just this year, that can amount to an equal share of diminished opportunity.

For years, business ownership by African-Americans has been growing rapidly. This is all to the good. But that hopeful trend is threatened in a struggling economy when the cost of energy, health care and just about everything else rising sharply.

As another challenge as African-American have met and overcome, these problems require clarity of purpose. They require the solidarity of groups like the . And at times, they also require a willingness to break from conventional thinking.

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Nowhere are the limitations of conventional thinking any more apparent than in education policy. Education reform has long been a priority of the , and for good reason. For all the best efforts of teachers and administrators, the worst problems of our public school system are often found in black communities.

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Black and Latino students are among the most likely to drop out of high school. I don't have to tell you that. African-Americans are also among the least likely to go onto college. After decades of hearing the same big promises from the public education establishment and seeing the same poor results, it is surely time to shake off old ways and to demand new reforms.

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That isn't just my opinion. It's the conviction of parents in poor neighborhoods across this nation who want better lives for their children.

In Washington, D.C., the Opportunity Scholarship Program serves more than 1,900 boys and girls from families with an average income of $23,000 a year. And more than 7,000 more families have applied for that program.

What they all have in common is the desire to get their kids into a better school. Democrats in Congress, including my opponent, opposed the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. In remarks to the American Federation of Teachers last weekend, Senator Obama dismissed public support for private school vouchers for low-income Americans as "tired rhetoric" about vouchers and school choice. All that went over well with the teachers union, but where does it leave families and their children who are stuck in failing schools?

Over the years, Americans have heard a lot of tired rhetoric about education. We've heard it in the endless excuses of people who seem more concerned about their own position than about our children. (APPLAUSE)

We've heard it from politicians who accept the status quo rather than stand up for real change in our public schools. Parents ask only for schools that are safe, teachers who are competent, and diplomas that open the doors of opportunity.

When a public system fails repeatedly to meet these minimal objectives, parents ask only for a choice in the education of their children. Some parents -- some parents may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private school. Many will choose a charter school. No entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity.

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We should also offer more choices to those who wish to become teachers. Many thousands of highly qualified men and women have great knowledge, wisdom and experience to offer public school students. But a monopoly on teacher certification prevents them from getting that chance.

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My friends, you can be a Nobel laureate and not qualify to teach in most public schools today. Why is that?

They don't have all the proper credits in educational theory or methodology. All they have is the learning and the desire and the ability to share it. If we're putting the interests of student first, then those qualifications should be enough.

If I'm elected president, school choice for all who want it, and expansion of opportunity scholarships and alternative certification for teachers, will be part of a serious agenda of education reform.

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I will target funding to recruit teachers who graduate in the top 25 percent of their class or who participate in an alternative teacher recruitment program such as Teach for America, the American Board for Teacher Excellence and the New Teacher Project. We will pay bonuses to teachers who take on the challenge of working in our most troubled schools, because we need their fine minds and good hearts to help turn those schools around.

We will award bonuses as well to our highest achieving teachers, and no longer will we measure teacher achievement by conformity to process. We will measure it by the success of their students.

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Moreover, the funds for these bonuses will not be controlled by faraway officials in Washington, a state capitol, or even in a district office. Under my reforms, we will entrust both the funds and the responsibilities where they belong -- in the office of the school principal.

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One reason -- one reason that charter schools are so successful and so sought after by parents is that principals have spending discretion. And I intend to give that same discretion to public school principals. No longer will money be spent in service to rigid and often meaningless formulas. Relying on the good judgment and firsthand knowledge of school principals, education money will be spent in service to public school students.

We can also help more children and young adults to study outside of school by expanding support for virtual learning. So I've proposed to direct $500 million in current federal funds to build new virtual schools and to support the development of online courses for students.

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Through competitive grants, we will allocate another $250 million to support state programs expanding online education opportunities, including the creation of new public virtual charter schools. States can use these funds to build virtual math and science academies to help expand the availability of advanced placement math, science and computer science courses, online tutoring, and foreign language courses. Under my reforms, moreover, parents will exercise the freedom of choice in obtaining extra help for children who are falling behind.

As it is, federal aid to parents for tutoring for their children has to go through another bureaucracy. They can't purchase the tutoring directly without having to deal with the same education establishment that failed their children in the first place.

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These needless restrictions must be removed. Under my reforms, if a student needs extra help, parents will be able to sign them up to get it with direct public support.

My friends, over the years the has brought enormous good into the life of our country, in part by broadening the reach of economic opportunity. There was a time when economists took little, if any, notice at all of the poverty of black communities. Even in times of general economic growth, many lived in a perpetual recession, and the jobs available didn't promise much upward mobility.

Our country still has a lot of progress to make on this score, but with 1.2 million businesses today owned and operated by African- Americans, more and more are no longer just spectators on the prosperity of our country. They are stakeholders.

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As much as anyone else, they count on their government to help create conditions of economic growth. And as president, I intend to. Senator Obama and I have fundamental differences on economic policy. But when he describes my plan, I'm not always sure his heart is in it. So let me have a go at it myself.

I believe that in a troubled economy, when folks are struggling to afford the necessities of life, higher taxes are the last thing we need. The economy isn't hurting because workers and businesses are under taxed. Raising taxes eliminates jobs, hurts small businesses and delays economic recovery.

Under my plan, we will preserve the current low rates as they are so businesses, large and small, can hire more people. We will double the personal exemption from $3,500 to $7,000 for every dependent in every family in America.

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We will offer every individual and family a large tax credit to buy their health care so that their health insurance is theirs to keep, even when they move or change jobs. And we'll lower the business tax rate so American companies open new plants and create more jobs in this country instead of going overseas.

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Instead of going overseas to plea the second highest tax rate in the world.

My opponent and I have honest differences as well about the growth of government, and it may be that many of you share his view. But even allowing for disagreement, surely there's common ground in the principle that government cannot go on forever spending recklessly and incurring debt.

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Government has grown by 60 percent in the last eight years because the Congress and this administration have failed to meet their responsibilities.

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And next year, just next year, total federal expenditures are predicted to reach over $3 trillion. That's an awful lot. That's an awful lot for us to be spending when this nation is already more than $9 trillion in debt, or more than $30,000 in debt for every man, woman and child in America.

That's a debt -- that's a debt our government plans to leave for your children and mine to bear. And that's a failure not only of financial foresight, but of moral obligation.

There'll come a time, there'll come a day when the road reaches a dead end, and it won't be today's politicians who suffer the consequences, it will be American workers and their children who were left with worthless promises and trillion-dollar debts. We cannot let that happen.

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As president, I'll work with every member of Congress, Republican, Democrat, Independent, who shares my commitment to reforming government and controlling spending. I'll order a top-to- bottom review of every federal program, department and agency.

We're going to demand accountability. The American people deserve it. We're going to make sure...

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We're going to make sure failed programs are not rewarded and that discretionary spending is going where it belongs, to essential priorities like job training, the security of our citizens, the care of our brave veterans.

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To get our economy running at full strength again, we must also get a handle on the costs of energy. Under my plan, we will produce more of America's own energy, we will expand domestic oil production, which is why I've called on Congress to lift its ban on offshore drilling. Something Congress has so far refused to do.

We'll build at least 45 nuclear plants that will create over 700,000 good jobs to construct and operate them. We'll develop clean coal technology, which alone will create tens of thousands of jobs in some of America's most hard-pressed areas.

We will accelerate the development of wind and solar power and other renewable technologies. And we'll help automakers design and sell cars that don't depend on gasoline.

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Production of hybrid, flex fuel and electric cars will bring America closer to energy independence, and it will bring jobs to auto plants, parts manufacturers, and the companies and the communities that support them.

I don't have to tell anyone in this room our country is passing through a very, very tough time. But Americans have been through worse and beaten longer odds.

The men and women of the know more than most about facing long odds and overcoming adversity. Many of you are veterans of the great civil rights struggle of a generation and more ago.

Like my friend John Lewis, some of you have seen enough years to have known Martin Luther King, Jr., and even marched at his side or not far behind in Birmingham, Montgomery, or elsewhere. For all of this, like Dr. King, you were called agitators, troublemakers, malcontents, and disturbers of the peace. These are often the terms applied to men and women of conscience who will not endure cruelty nor abide injustice.

Perhaps with more clarity and charity than was always deserved, it was Dr. King who often reminded us there was no moral badness, and there was moral blindness. And moral badness and moral blindness were not the same. It was this spirit that turned hatred into forgiveness, anger into conviction, and a bitter life into a great one.

He loved and honored his country even when the feeling was unreturned, and counseled others to do the same. He gave his countrymen the benefit of the doubt, believing, as he wrote, that returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deep a darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that.

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I remember first learning what had happened in Memphis on the 4th of April, 1968, feeling just as everyone else did back home. Only perhaps even more uncertain and alarmed for my country in the darkness that was then enclosed around me and my fellow prisoners of war.

In our circumstances at the time, good news from America was hard to come by. The bad news was a different matter. And each new report of violence, rioting and other tribulations in America was delivered to us without delay.

The enemy had correctly calculated that the news of Dr. King's death would deeply wound morale and leave us worried and afraid for our country. Doubtless, it boosted our captors' morale, confirming their belief that America was a lost cause and that the future belonged to them.

Yet how differently it all turned out. And if they had been the more reflective kind, our enemies would have understood, but the cause of Dr. King was bigger than any one man and could not be stopped by force of violence.

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Struggle is rewarded in God's own time. Wrongs are set right, and evil is overcome. We know this to be true, because it's the story of your cause and the story of our country.

As much as any other group in America, the

I am a candidate for president who seeks your vote and hopes to earn it. But whether or not I win your support, I need your good will and your counsel.

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And should I succeed, I'll need it all the more. I've always believed in this country, in a good America, a great America. But I've always known we can build a better America where no place or person is left without hope or opportunity by the sins of injustice or indifference. It would be among the great privileges of my life to work with you in that cause.